VAT Price Increase-- pennys add up to huge profits?? Am I being price gouged?

charlieboy_80

I've got a gym membership at Harper's Fitness in Reading. I was paying £31.50 per month. There was a sign up saying that the price would be increasing due to the VAT change in the new year. To calculate what I SHOULD be paying, I used my maths teacher skills, (divided by 1.175 to find the pre-VAT price, then multiplied by 1.2), and worked out I should be paying £32.17.

However, my direct debit's gone through, and according to my bank statement, I've paid £32.20. Now, I know it's only a 3p difference, but that adds up to quite a nice profit for the gym.

If they have 300 members all on the same tarrif as me (and I'm sure they have at least that many people- just at my location), that's £90 per month, or £1080 per year.

Should I alert them to the error of their calculation, and look like a cheap skate trying to claw 3p back, or do I just ignore it?

Or do I post it on here, and see if Martin Lewis features discusses this on GMTV/Daybreak??

HappyMJ

Just ignore it most companies used it as an opportunity to round up prices. It would have gone up by inflation plus a bit more at some point during the year anyway.

And...300 members multiplied by 3p is £9 per month just enough to pay the accountant for his additonal services in filling out the extra VAT forms.

Azari

charlieboy_80 wrote: »

I've got a gym membership at Harper's Fitness in Reading. I was paying £31.50 per month. There was a sign up saying that the price would be increasing due to the VAT change in the new year. To calculate what I SHOULD be paying, I used my maths teacher skills, (divided by 1.175 to find the pre-VAT price, then multiplied by 1.2), and worked out I should be paying £32.17.

However, my direct debit's gone through, and according to my bank statement, I've paid £32.20. Now, I know it's only a 3p difference, but that adds up to quite a nice profit for the gym.

If they have 300 members all on the same tarrif as me (and I'm sure they have at least that many people- just at my location), that's £90 per month, or £1080 per year.

Have you had an Ofsted inspection lately?

Did they tell you that 300 * 3p is now £90 rather than the £9 it was when I went to school?


(Sorry, I couldn't resist. )

charlieboy_80

Oh, that's why we had special measures recently!! I put the decimal in the wrong place!!! Oops!!

~Beanie~

They call it 'Silver Pricing' at the company I work for, basically they add the VAT increase and then round everything up to the nearest 5p!

gordikin

charlieboy_80 wrote: »

I've got a gym membership at Harper's Fitness in Reading. I was paying £31.50 per month. There was a sign up saying that the price would be increasing due to the VAT change in the new year. To calculate what I SHOULD be paying, I used my maths teacher skills, (divided by 1.175 to find the pre-VAT price, then multiplied by 1.2), and worked out I should be paying £32.17.

However, my direct debit's gone through, and according to my bank statement, I've paid £32.20. Now, I know it's only a 3p difference, but that adds up to quite a nice profit for the gym.

If they have 300 members all on the same tarrif as me (and I'm sure they have at least that many people- just at my location), that's £90 per month, or £1080 per year.

Should I alert them to the error of their calculation, and look like a cheap skate trying to claw 3p back, or do I just ignore it?

Or do I post it on here, and see if Martin Lewis features discusses this on GMTV/Daybreak??

No you post it on MSE so we can have a laugh. I despair if you are teaching. Find another job as you are totally unsuited to teaching Maths to our future generation.

whitegoods_engineer

Maybe the Maths teacher could brush up on their skills during the extended holidays, or when they get home at 3.30!

zigzigzag

The same happened to me with my hairdressers Toni & Guy - at the end of 2010 a cut and style was £60, then in January when I went to pay it was £62 - I queried it and they said the rise was due to the VAT increase. As £2 is far more than the VAT rise, I queried it further, and they said the extra rise was to make up for their costs increasing across the board. So it looks like many companies are taking this opportunity to raise their base prices.
(PS It's totally unnecessary to be so mean to the OP, mistakes are easily made.)

sunnysea83

whitegoods_engineer wrote: »

Maybe the Maths teacher could brush up on their skills during the extended holidays, or when they get home at 3.30!

You clearly dont know much about teaching then and perhaps you should read up on teaching and what a teacher is expected to do!.

Im not a teacher myself but I know a lot of teachers and they all start work at around 8 am an hour before most office workers, then they teach all day with a 30 min lunch break if they are not doing DTs, lunch duty, meetings, setting up the room for the afternoon lessons, they then finish teaching usually around 3.15, when they then have to attend meetings, mark books or coursework, parents evening, they then usually go home to do more marking, reports and lesson planning for the next day, sometimes not finishing till 10pm at night - thats 5 hours after the 9 to 5er gets home! They also work at the weekends marking and lesson planning etc and as for the extended holidays yes they get 6 weeks in the summer and about 6 weeks the rest of the year but during this time they do still do work - ie going in to sort out classroom, lesson planning for the next term, helping with timetabling etc.

It infuriates me how many people dont appreciate what teachers do and the hard work they put in to what they do! :mad:

Yes a maths teacher is expected to know their maths but we all make mistakes from time to time!

daveyjp

£60 for a haircut! Madness.

Kayteehee

zigzigzag wrote: »

The same happened to me with my hairdressers Toni & Guy - at the end of 2010 a cut and style was £60, then in January when I went to pay it was £62 - I queried it and they said the rise was due to the VAT increase. As £2 is far more than the VAT rise, I queried it further, and they said the extra rise was to make up for their costs increasing across the board. So it looks like many companies are taking this opportunity to raise their base prices.
(PS It's totally unnecessary to be so mean to the OP, mistakes are easily made.)

£60/£62 for a cut and style! I'd be gutted if I had to pay half of that. lol! :rotfl: